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Topic: Speed and Distance (Read 229 times)

First, allow me to humbly apologize, dear readers. I know many of you expect a post a week and I did not deliver last week. Worry not.I was not abducted.I did not mysteriously commit suicide.I was not forcefully admitted into a mental institution. That was last year.

What I WAS doing, however, was reading your emails. Let me tell you something, patriots. Never in my life have I received so many GOD DAMNED EMAILS in a 4 day period. Like some sort of cybernetic Santa Claus a month before Christmas.And an OVERWHELMING amount of these emails (seriously, friends, more than 2/3s) were asking the same question.

If it's aliens... what do they look like?

And it's a helluva question indeed. One that I couldn't POSSIBLY know the answer to.

And if I don't know the answer, that means the various governing bodies of the world DEFINITELY know the answer! In fact, I would wager, at right this very moment there's a secret filing cabinet tucked away in a back closet, 5 miles below the Area 51 or Fort Knox or Congress or the White House or the Vatican. I bet its filled with reams and binders and folders chock full of descriptions, plans, locations, hell... even pictures.

But this doesn't mean I don't have an answer for you. On the contrary. It just may not be the answer you seek, dear truthers.

I made my way to the library. I'm not sure if many of you are aware, but libraries DO still exist. Why the library and not google, you ask?

BECAUSE THE GOVERNMENT IS WATCHING!!!

I spent hours there. Days. Books surrounded me, stacked so high, I couldn't even reach the top. It took so much reading, so many energy drinks, and some extremely late nights.But I believe I have your answer.You're just asking the wrong question.

To determine what a space faring species would look like (and i do not mean facial features... more bone structure.... or if they would have bones at all) we must first ask ourselves how they got here. In other words... what kind of ships or engines are they using?

Why is that important?

Speed and distance, my friends. Speed and distance.With current technology, it takes six months to get to Mars. Current technology? What am I saying? We average human civilian plebs have NO IDEA what "current technology" even MEANS because congress, the senate, the NSA, CIA, FBI, and other various government acronyms have confiscated it and WILL NOT SHARE!!

But I digress. LET US ASSUME that rocket engines and solar sails are the current technology and there isn't some secret space ship up there with a crazy ass Newtonian engine.

ROCKETRY

It takes us 6 months to get to Mars. Hell, the nearest star system to us, Alpha Centauri, is just over 4 and a quarter light years away. It would take us over a hundred years to get there.We fly too slow. And it's too far away. Speed and distance.

So, we can probably rule basic rockets out of the equation. I mean, not necessarily, of course. There is always the possibility that some alien civilization on the other side of the Milky Way sent a buncha artificial intelligence (see: robots) across the black void, propelled by rockets.But I doubt it.They require too much maintenance. They move too slowly. They run through fuel too quickly. A trip from, at most, all the way across the galaxy using rockets would take an ASTOUNDING amount of fuel.Aside from that, the amount of time it would take a rocket to reach this planet from some rock alllllllllllll the way at the other end of the galaxy.... what are we talking here... millennia? Megennium? Decamegennium?

So... for the sake of argument... let's say rocketry isn't the method of flight for these attackers.

I think, in order to answer your questions, Truthers, we have to consider engines that we minuscule humans consider theoretical...Look, you all know I am no rocket scientist. I'm a simple man spreading truth from an undisclosed location. I hide from governments and lizard people ASSASSINS while trying to inform and advise.I do not pretend to know the inner workings and intricacies of theoretical space flight engines.That's why we have the internet.So let's talk AntiMatter engines.

ANTIMATTER ENGINES

Anti-Matter engines are entirely theoretical and kind of lean over into the area of science fiction. I say "lean" because it's not exactly outside of the realm of possibility (Hence the whole "theoretical" thing). The Large Hadron Collider produces antimatter, if only for a split second. So, using that little tidbit of information right there, we can assume that it's not a fictional technology.

An antimatter spaceship would somehow utilize a machine very similar to and, hopefully, much smaller than the LHC, to produce antimatter. These particles would need to make physical contact with actual matter in order for a reaction to occur... probably... Remember: theoretical.

How do they do this? Who knows? Perhaps they have another machine that produces matter right before flinging it at the antimatter. Maybe it's as simple as "the trash system from the kitchens empties right into the anti-matter chamber".But who really cares about all that nonsense. What we are trying to determine here is if this would be a viable technology that some hypothetical aliens could use to get across the galaxy in an acceptable amount of time.

Tangent: What's an acceptable amount of time, you ask? Fantastic question... One that you'll probably have to figure out yourself. Some people may think 100 years.... some may think 10. Up to you, I suppose.The REAL question, however, is how fast can antimatter engines go? Remember, Patriots, time and distance.

Entirely theoretical engines are a bit tricky when it comes to determining speed. Again, I am no rocket scientist and my research skills, though incredible, are not on par with NASA... So please be forgiving. It's difficult landing an acceptable answer but most sites seem to agree that antimatter engines would be at LEAST 10x faster than rocket engines.Which is, indeed, a helluva thing. If it were to take ten million years to rocket yourself from one end of the Milky Way to the opposite, antimatter engines would take just one million.And that's a helluva difference. But is it good enough? Is that a viable amount of time to make it from one star to another? Were it humanity making that trip, we would have to do it in giant colony ships that were big enough to house either enough embryo's and seeds to get another world started... or, in the far more fictional scenario, colony ships that are huge enough to house (comfortably) hundreds of thousands of people and thru generation after generation.... not to mention the animals. The people that launched the mission would be dead for longer than ANYBODY YOU CAN THINK OF by the time it arrived.

This isn't really a great scenario for a civilization. Imagine if you were born on a colony ship right in the middle of the journey. You have 500,000 years behind you, and 500,000 years left to go. You know for a fact that you, your children, and your grandchildren.... in fact, everyone you will ever know EVER... will never live to see a planet's surface. How would that make you feel, to know that some ancestor of yours made a decision and now your entire family is pretty much on "stand by" until your greatx10^xx grandson lands on some rock somewhere and builds a cabin.

Black hole engines, similar to antimatter engines, harness the power of something dangerous to move at speeds incomprehensible to humanity. And its all about the size of the thing. I still have questions about this type of engine. Questions that aren't really answerable or, if they DO have answers, the answers are based ENTIRELY in theory.How do they harness a black hole? Do they build one from scratch? if so, how? Or is it nothing more than cowboys rustling up cattle? Perhaps these aliens that may or may not exist have some sort of interstellar laser guided other-dimensional cord that they use to wrangle the black hole. Like some sort of space lasso. But perhaps not...

According to SCIENCE!!!.... a black hole propelling a starship has to meet some specific criteria.

The black hole needs to have a long enough lifespan to be useful. This makes sense. The smaller the black hole, the shorter its life. You don't want your black hole running out before you reach your destination, ESPECIALLY if the next Exxon BH station is still hundreds of light years away.

The black hole needs to be powerful enough so the ship can accelerate itself up to a reasonable fraction of the speed of light in a reasonable amount of time. I guess, in all technicality, this isn't so much NEEDED as WANTED. why would you even bother trying to harness a black hole if you were only going to move as fast as a rocket? Or if you would only reach 1% light speed after a decade of propulsion? With great risk comes great reward.

The black hole should be small enough that its energy can be accessed. We're all aware (at least I hope we are) of the Event Horizon. This is the point of no return for black holes. An invisible border completely surrounding a black hole that, no matter what, you can never ever come back from once you've passed. The smaller the black hole, the smaller the Event Horizon. There's too much of a chance for your ship to tear apart.... so, in terms of safety, the smaller, the better. But...

The black hole also needs to be large enough that we can focus the energy to make it. With humans, the smaller something is, the more difficult it is to interact with or produce. For instance... moving a chair across the room requires some muscle power and a few seconds. Moving an atom one centimeter to the left however... That requires multi-million dollar machines and government grants and about 17 different scientists all with doctorates in their field. Yes yes tennis balls are smaller than chairs and they're easy enough to throw. I mean what we know of as the world.... vs the atomic level... or quantum level. So, in terms of ease, the larger the better.

Finally, the black hole needs to have mass similar to that of the star ship it is providing power for. This is kind of a no brainer. It needs to be strong enough to propel the ship, so to speak.

Using all this as an example... and this is straight from wiki, folks... a black hole weighing about six hundred thousand metric tons would be about the size of a single attometer (Smaller, in fact. How big is an attometer? Smaller than an atom. We're talking sub-nuclear, here)... last for around three and a half years... and could accelerate to 10% light speed in about 3 weeks.

Holy shit. 10% light speed?!?! The milky way is approximately 100,000 light years across. That means, roughly speaking, it would take only ten thousand years to traverse from one end to the other. Holy shit, we cut that time down exponentially, didn't we? Impressive.

But still... we're talking THOUSANDS of years. Unless these aliens are some sort of immortal or super long lived civilization (which is ABSOLUTELY TERRIFYING)... we're STILL talking colony ships or artificial Intelligence.Colony ships... probably not as scary as FUGGEN MURDER DROIDS.

No, I think it's safe to say than any scenario that would result in a colony ship or killer robots from outer space would be fictional at best. For one, a colony ship large enough to traverse the stars for upwards of 10,000 years would be so ever loving huge that anybody with a big enough telescope could spot it easily. Murder droids... well I don't see why they would be taking their sweet and ass time. Why not just take as many asteroids as they can and pelt us all at once? Why even bother with precision strikes when you could just destroy the entire earth?

CONCLUSION

I'm not sure what we're facing here, if anything at all. Autonomous blobs of jelly surfing radio waves through the deep black? Little green or grey men with ostrich egg eyes spinning in marvelous saucers made from previously unheard of metals? Beings made of pure energy, policing a sector of galaxies, ensuring a warlike species doesn't make its way to the stars?

Who knows? If there is an alien presence... I think it's safe to say that it may take more than just an explanation or two of the types of engines they might be using. And yes, I understand that I am DIRECTLY CONTRADICTING my own damn words here... but its true.Time and Distance can help us understand WHO may be attacking (robots or aliens or whatever).... but as for what they actually look like? Do they have noses? limbs? fingers?

As I said, it may not be the answer you seek.

Well, dear readers.... that seems like a question for Darwin.... and a different post for a different day...AS ALWAYS here on the Jonathan Marcus Program, we encourage free thought and the spreading of information. Perhaps, in the near future, some of my top secret/eyes only contacts will come through and we can't see about getting you, my fellow truthers, some more in terms of correct information.Until next time, dear readers!Question everything!Don't believe the government!But most importantly